From the South Florida Sun-Sentinel

No Joke

From the streets to the clubs, these urban comics are keeping it real funny.

by T. M. Shine

February 9 2005

"To live and die by one's material." That's the standard South Florida's godfather of urban comedy, Marvin Dixon, sets for rising talent. Dixon has worked his way up from playing neighborhood clubs to creating urban nights at every Improv in the area. The comedy business ebbs and flows, but right now, things are flowing thanks to two words: Dave Chappelle.

People want to know: Who's next? Where will the next Dave Chappelle come from? Chicago? Philadelphia? Miami?

February may as well be Urban Comedy Month in South Florida. Both Benji Brown, a rising comic and 99 Jamz radio personality, and Miami street rat Larry Dogg have new DVDs coming out on Street Life Films. Rayzor recently headlined at the Palm Beach Improv at CityPlace and is wrapping up production on his soon-to-be-released CD Shit on Digital. And Dixon continues to monopolize the market.

Each of these comics has a distinct style. Rayzor warms up at poetry nights. Dogg prowls the streets stalking celebrities such as Lil Jon and providing motivational support for people vomiting on South Beach. Brown creates characters that rival his own personality, and Dixon has to impress only himself at this point.

These are our choices for the best urban comics South Florida has to offer. Take your pick.

Welcome to Doggville

Larry Dogg is Miami, from its crevices and alleyways to its dance floors and spotlights. Born and raised in the city, he has done stand up and emceed till he dropped. He even sings a bit when an appearance calls for it. But nothing compares to his surreal video tours of Miami, in which he'll go so far as to creep up behind police officers right in the middle of a shootout.

"Yeah, yeah, the cop didn't even know I was behind him, and then he did and bullets were already flying and the camera guy, man, he was scared," Dogg recalls. "But I told him, 'This is what we do. You gotta take one in the shoulder, so be it. We workin'. This is the job. Keep rollin'.' "

The best reality show you're going to see this year is Dogg's The Adventures of Street Dogg: Vol. 1. As P. Diddy screams early on in the new DVD: "Street Dogg is 'bout the motherfuckin' streets!"

Seeing Miami through Dogg's filter is like taking the form of a big, fat blunt that's being passed around the restroom of life. He steps into and sets up a frantic kaleidoscope of incidents, from following street fights to their hilarious conclusions to covering the differences between white Super Bowl parties and black ones. "White people party for real. The girls be gettin' naked. Candy-colored shots be goin' down," Dogg explains. "Black people all serious at a party, looking around. 'Who's gonna get shot tonight? Hope it's not me.' "

Dogg describes his work best by saying, "My talent is I can talk to anybody in any situation. They take to my personality and stop thinking about the cameras."

Consider the following exchange:

Dope dealer: "Hey, don't be putting me on camera selling you weed, man."

Dogg: "It's underground TV. Don't worry about it."

Dope dealer: "Oh, OK."

Dogg clearly has a way about him. On the DVD, he puts on a game face of bewilderment and low-key awe as he calmly steps into situations. He rarely raises his voice, though he does admonish some old guys sitting under a shady tree playing cards because they are oblivious to the tenement house going up in flames 10 yards away. During further investigation of that scene, Larry interviews neighborhood onlookers and finds that several crackheads live in the building, but no one accuses them of starting the fire. "Not the crackheads. No, they wouldn't have anything to do with a place burnin' down. Just a cooking accident. Some water boiled over," Dogg reports.

Going behind the scenes in South Beach, Dogg nails a wasted Lil Jon trying to explain the meaning of crunk ("It's a noun … no, an adjective") and visits an LL Cool J music-video audition, in which he seems to instigate an uproar over the number of light-skinned girls getting picked over the darker-skinned ones. So many hip-hop stars casually appear on the DVD, you'd think Dogg was in deep with the celebrities, that his reputation is world-renowned, especially when he gets into a heavy midnight conversation in the back of a limo with BG, a former member of the Cash Money Millionaires. It's so tight, you'd think Dogg is BG's consigliere.

"No, no, these guys don't even know who I am," he admits. "They're just cool with me. I have that effect. I'll go up to P. Diddy and ask him to borrow $20, and he just laughs. He gave me 60 bucks once and thought I was kidding and was going to give it back. I didn't give it back. I got P. Diddy's money."

It would be remiss of us not to mention how much motivation Dogg can provide someone on the verge of vomiting on a city street at 2 a.m. He'll never pass by someone hunched over without providing support: "Oh, yeah. You got it. Come on. You can do better. Yeah, there's the shrimp. How 'bout some lobster? Oh, yeah!"

Dogg has sideswiped the mainstream, creating a venue for himself with his street act, and hopes to do the same in Detroit, Philadelphia and New Orleans. But nothing could compare to the free-flowing way he's able to patrol his hometown. "Comedy is for sissies," one character in the DVD says.

But not Dogg's comedy. "I love this city," he says, "and it's my nature to be fearless."

He's no Fresh Prince

There's a telling moment on Benji Brown's new DVD, In Touch With Reality. The second skit offers a send-up of Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video and finds Brown strolling through the inner city in a hideous Afro wig, working an exotic model with lines such as, "I'm not like the other guys; I'm different." A viewer's natural response to this setup is to declare, "Oh, no -- not again. We've been Michael Jacksoned to death."

But then, the music kicks in and Brown begins singing, "It's close to midnight/And all my crackhead friends are on the street." He attempts to sidestep the hos and junkies getting in his face. It's an instant classic, and a tribute to Brown that he can pump up such a cliché.

This is going to be Brown's year. Aside from his duties as a morning personality on 99 Jamz and weekly appearances at the Miami Improv, he's going national with the release of his new DVD; a slot on P. Diddy's latest production, The Bad Boys of Comedy; a Bud Light commercial with Cedric the Entertainer that aired during the Super Bowl; and a skit on Trick Daddy's hot new album, Thug Matrimony. "Trick Daddy would come in the Improv all the time, so when he was making the record, he just told me to do my thing," Brown explains.

Brown's thing can go in several directions. He describes his material as half blue, half Disney. "Some guys say they can't do a clean show, and they'll cancel a booking," he says. "I don't want to cancel a show. Yeah, I can be clean."

He can be FCC-clean, but he's at his best at the blue end of the spectrum, as when he asks the women in the audience to raise their hands if their men are abusing them ("No hands? OK, blink if your man is abusing you") or bringing to life on film the wildly popular sketch-comedy character Ki-Ki. "She's more popular than me," Brown says of the squeaky-voiced ghetto girl. "I've lost my name. People on the streets call me Ki-Ki."

A graduate of Miramar High, Brown grew up in Hallandale Beach and Hollywood. "No Fresh Prince of Bel-Air memories in my childhood: Where we lived was the epitome of ghetto, a childhood full of rats and roaches," Brown recalls. "But it's half and half on how I feel about it now. I don't look down on it. I go back to the hood a lot."

He now lives in Pembroke Pines. "Ahhh, Pembroke Pines," he says.

Brown's profile is peaking just as lunches in Hollywood, Calif., are probably filled with people saying, "Get me the next Dave Chappelle," a need that perfectly fits his skills. "Chappelle's not exactly a pioneer," Brown says. "But sketch comedy had kind of came and went before he brought it back to life and opened people up to it again."

Melvin James, director of the BET reality show College Hill and the feature film A Miami Tail, is at the helm of the new DVD that is busting with hit-and-miss sketches of everything from a spoof on Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson's Newlyweds to a reality game show in which prostitutes have to prove their worthiness or face elimination.

The DVD makes for a powerful showcase, but the more success Brown has, "the more relatives I seem to have," he jokes. "Every time I'm on TV, my family gets bigger -- especially cousins. There ought to be a cap on cousins. One person can only have so many."

Joke-jacked

Ask any local comedian and they'll tell you: Marvin Dixon is The Man.

"The big acts come to town, ... they want me part of it. 'No major comic's show ever does well when you're not on the bill.' That's what they say," Dixon explains.

When promoters planned the Jokers Wild Comedy Tour throughout the Southeast with Don "DC" Curry, Arnez J. and John Witherspoon, booking was originally slow. " 'Ain't got Marvin on it.' Had to put Marvin on it and make up new fliers," Dixon remembers. "It ended up being the biggest tour last year in the secondary markets they were aiming for." This year, Dixon will headline the Jokers Wild Comedy Tour II, which will come to Miami March 18.

Known as much for his comedic talent as for promoting and cultivating urban comedy in South Florida, Dixon is the scene's stamp of approval. He hosts urban nights on Tuesdays at Miami's Improv and Wednesdays at the Palm Beach Improv at CityPlace.

"I don't oversaturate. [I play only] Improvs now," Dixon says. "That way, people always know where to find me. That's important. I learned that from strippers. Strippers move from club to club, and you can't never find 'em again: 'Oh, down at Rollexx now?' Well, you can't inconvenience a black man like that."

From 1997 to 2003, Dixon was a morning personality on 99 Jamz. "And it's amazing how people still stay with you long after you've been on every morning," he says. "When you think about it, if you were on a TV series for six or seven years, that's a real good run."

As the main man down here, Dixon was responsible for bringing comedy to Zo's Summer Groove and drawing 12,000 to the American Airlines Arena for last year's event, and he performs a usually sold-out show of new material every year at the James L. Knight Center. He has appeared on HBO's Def Comedy Jam and BET's Comic View, but the local Improv nights remain his baby. "The shows are my shows, so I say yea or nay to the acts we put on," he explains.

He points out that he has to keep an eye on many of the younger comics, since they've been known to steal his material. "Joke jackers," he calls them.

"They come in a club, and it's like, 'Stick 'em up!' They pull out their guns, make you slow down," Dixon explains. " 'Wait, go back. Do that part again. I didn't get it all down.' "

Dixon will do regional work and venture out nationally when the opportunities arise. "But I ain't never leavin' Florida," he says. "Money comes and goes, but I love this. When you're ripping, it's like a high. It's better than music, because comedy attracts everybody. Everybody's got to laugh."

Phase 4

Raymond "Rayzor" Davis' first attempt at a career in comedy was an audition for In Living Color. Having never done standup or played an open mike, he went straight to the land of the Wayanses.

"My friends and family got on me," Rayzor recalls. "They said, 'You don't try out, we don't want to hear no more jokes from you. That's it. We don't want to hear none of your remarks no more. Tired of it. Get serious or give it up.' "

So he did it. In Living Color came to Miami for a casting call and he stepped up. "Did my set, everybody laughed," Rayzor says. "That was it."

He didn't get a callback, but the audition set him on a new course. The rest of his training took place at Studio 183 in Carol City. "One of the three toughest places to play," Rayzor says. "You've got the Peppermint Lounge in Jersey and the 559 in Atlanta. Those are the three toughest rooms."

Having majored in history at Bethune-Cookman College, Rayzor is a bit more analytical than most comics. In fact, he's not a comic; he's a comedian. "A lot of people tell jokes," he explains. "There are very few comedians."

The three phases of comedy, according to the Book of Rayzor, are:

Phase 1: Emulating the established acts you think are funny.

Phase 2: Doing anything for a laugh. You're naked out there, you're bombing. Just make 'em laugh.

Phase 3: Finding your voice.

"A lot of [comics are] stuck in phase 2 and never get out," Rayzor says. "They're all props and silly shit."

Then, there are comics who suddenly become comedians, such as Chris Rock. "You ever see [Rock's 1993 movie] CB4? We know where Chris has been. He was a regional guy for a long time, and then all the sudden, he found himself," Rayzor says. "He found his voice."

It goes back to the days of the court jester. "It's about attacking the ills of society in the king's face and not getting killed for it," he says.

Rayzor stars in the upcoming independent film Life of the Party, a mockumentary set in South Beach. He has toured nationally, appeared in music videos with the likes of Lil Jon and the East Side Boyz, Trina, Ludacris and Fat Joe. Last month, he headlined at the Palm Beach Improv and is set to tour Great Britain in mid-February. But he can also be found at poetry nights at South Florida venues such as Jade in Miami Beach and the Kola Nut Café in North Miami Beach.

"Rhythm, meter, timing: It helps my thought process to appear at poetry nights," Rayzor explains. "I do funny poems that I write on the spot. It also helps me improvisationally." He was a poet before he was a comic, and opening for Tupac Shakur at Studio 183 during the rapper's Me Against the World tour in 1995 was perhaps his greatest moment onstage to date.

Rayzor describes his standup style with a question: "What would you say if you didn't have to worry about manners or tact?"

The answer: "I don't give a fuck onstage. I don't even worry about being funny anymore. I know I am."

Truth and truisms, "that's what it's all about," he says. "You get in all your points while the audience waits for the funny."

He is the one urban comedian to whom Dixon gives up the sword. He passes the test. He "lives and dies" by his own material.

Rayzor predicts that he will eventually hit the mainstream fully formed. "Then, people wonder where the hell you came from," he says. "[It] took Bernie Mac 22 years."

He notes that Dave Chappelle has jumped the hurdle. "Chappelle sells out in 30 seconds. That's not black people buying tickets. That's people with credit cards," Rayzor says. "You have to have street love before you make the money from the suburbs. Right now, I got all the street love."

Get your laugh on

Here's where you can find these comics.

Larry Dogg, a.k.a. Street Dogg: His DVD The Adventures of Street Dogg: Vol. 1 will be released Tuesday by Street Life Films. Visit www.streetdogg.com and www.mercuryent.net.

Benji Brown: On Feb. 25, he will host the Fifth Annual Comedy and Talent Explosion at Palm Beach Community College's Duncan Theatre, 4200 Congress Ave., in Lake Worth (561/868-3127 or www.pbcc.edu/events). He's part of The Big Lip Bandit show weekday mornings on 99 Jamz (WEDR, 99.1-FM) and performs Tuesday nights at the Miami Improv, 3390 Mary St. (305/441-8200 or www.miamiimprov.com). Street Life Films will release his new DVD, In Touch With Reality, Feb. 22. Visit www.benjibrown.com and www.mercuryent.net.

Marvin Dixon: The godfather of local comedy hosts his weekly Urban Night Tuesdays at the Miami Improv and Wednesdays at the Palm Beach Improv at CityPlace, 550 S. Rosemary Ave., Suite 250, in West Palm Beach (561/833-1812 or www.palmbeachimprov.com). On March 18, he'll be headlining the Jokers Wild Comedy Tour II, at the James L. Knight International Center, 400 S.E. Second Ave., Miami (305/372-4634 or www.jlknightcenter.com). Visit www.marvindixonlive.com.

Raymond "Rayzor" Davis: Watch for his new CD, Shit on Digital. He is currently touring Europe but is a regular at all the South Florida Improvs, including the new one at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Hollywood. Visit www.sphinxmg.com.